How to Protect Your Best Agents From Being Poached

Are you worried about losing your best agents to another contact centre?

You should be! When the competition are sniffing around, you can’t just hope for the best…

You need to put proactive and reactive strategies in place, as our Editor – Megan Jones – discovered when she interviewed contact centre experts Dara Kiernan, Gareth Brophy, Jeremy Watkin, Jessica Ham, Katie Stabler, and Pier Ragone.

Get on Top of Any Scheduling or Payroll Issues – Fast!

First, take a long, hard look at where your current systems and processes may be upsetting your agents and making you more vulnerable – especially if you know things are getting a bit sloppy. 

“The two holy grail rules for a contact centre are “don’t mess with my schedule” and “don’t mess with my pay”. 

Getting these right month on month builds trust – and messing up breaks that trust! When that happens, agents may very well find themselves thinking “Maybe someone else will look after me a bit better…” and it’s those moments of weakness that can create the opportune moment for an agent to jump ship when a competitor comes knocking.

So you need to make sure they aren’t happening in the first place!” – Pier Ragone, Principal Consultant, CX Operations & Strategy.

Also be mindful of the impact of bad behaviour pushing people out of the door. If you have a low tolerance for bad team leaders, for example, it will give your agents one less reason to think about leaving (and the opposite is true too!).

If you are looking for advice on the underlying principles of great agent scheduling, read our article: The Dos and Don’ts of Agent Scheduling.

Try to Encourage Everyone to Have a Best Friend at Work

Your agents could also be less swayed by a competing offer of employment if they have a best friend at work – particularly if these strong friendships extend to socializing on their evenings and weekends.

If people feel connected to the people they work with and are happy where they are, they could even be willing to turn down a small pay increase to stay with their buddies.

However, be aware that this has the potential to backfire on you massively too. After all, if one member of a strong friendship group jumps ship, then there’s a higher chance that the rest of the team will follow.

The same is true of a great leader who has built a strong and cohesive unit – if they go, there could be a domino effect of losing the people around them to the competing company.

Use Food to Regularly Bring People Together and Socialize

That being said, one great way to proactively foster stronger friendships is by using food to regularly bring people together – including those tried-and-tested “Pizza Fridays”.

“Having pizza parties in the office might cost you a few hundred pounds, but it can help your agents feel more connected to their team.

This is because taking them off the phones to socialize can really help to lower your churn rate and annual new starter training costs over time, so when you look at it like that, it’s actually a cost saving.” – Jessica Ham, an experienced contact centre leader and receiver of the UKCCF Gold Award for Head of Contact Centre.

You could also try introducing “Tea Tuesdays” – a 15-minute social break with free tea and biscuits, giving agents a monthly opportunity to chat to their friends in other teams – just like we saw at Teleperformance in Gateshead (UK).

For advice on what it takes to deliver truly memorable team engagement days and activities, read our article: Kick-Start Your Next Team Engagement Day

Regularly Remind Agents How Their Training Helps Towards Career Progression

It’s not just about team spirit! It’s equally critical that agents – as individuals – believe they have a career and future with you. This is because, if people feel there’s no opportunities for them, they are far more likely to jump ship.

Shaking up how you position your new starter training can really help here. Even if you’re running the same modules, if you can talk about the value of each module and how it fits into a bigger plan for your agents, it can help them have a firmer grasp of available career pathways.

“Squeezing in training modules here and there can feel very piecemeal, and even if you as a leader can sit there and say “the training is complete”, it doesn’t mean the agent is any richer or poorer for the knowledge they’ve had, in understanding its purpose and how it ties into their overall career direction.

It’s about being more purposeful and making sure agents don’t just think it’s a stop-gap with some basic training.

Success comes down to transparency around career growth and taking the time to talk to your agents about what they want.” – Katie Stabler, CULTIVATE Customer Experience by Design and author of CX-Ism: Re-Defining Business Success.

To find out what it takes to set out truly transparent and engaging career pathways, read our article: How to Define Career Paths in Your Contact Centre

Make an Effort to Win Over Your Agents’ Friends and Family Too

Another key – but often overlooked – area to get right is the perception of your agents’ friends and family.

After all, if your agent is meeting up with loved ones over the weekend and saying, “I’m tired of this job” or “You’ll never guess what my awful team leader did… Again!”, the talk at the table and their influence will be against you! And they’ll be the first to say “take the job!” if a competitor comes knocking with a better offer!

The good news is, it’s possible to change the narrative – and even be attracting THEIR friends and family into your contact centre instead.

A very visible way you can begin to sway this in your favour is through the quality (not quantity!) of the prizes you give away during any games and incentives.

“An agent once won a TV as part of a Friday prize incentive, but instead of getting a larger, cheaper brand, we gave away a smaller, but top-of-the-range model.

The agent came back in on Monday saying her husband was delighted to have won such a quality TV. So, it definitely pays to be smart with the budget you have – even when it comes to chocolates or wine giveaways.

Quality prizes really help to reinforce a perception of a quality workplace, and that impresses friends and family.” – Dara Kiernan, Leadership Development and Contact Centre Consultant.

It can also help to maintain a culture of celebration, particularly around qualifications and promotions, as this also creates regular opportunities for positive conversations at home.

Physically Relocate Your Contact Centre Somewhere Agents Have Fewer Options

On the other end of the spectrum, some contact centres really do “go big” to hold onto their staff.

Albeit a bit controversial, and Call Centre Helper do not advocate this approach, there are those who are known to have deliberately located their contact centres in places where there’s limited local employment – physically limiting the options available to their agents and reducing the risk of churn, whilst simultaneously cost saving on salary and benefits packages.

“I once came across a company where they consciously built their call centres in places with really high unemployment, such as remote small towns, giving them access to a workforce that had limited options to work elsewhere.

It worked! After all, if you put your call centre somewhere where there isn’t a lot of competition, that’ll keep people from getting poached – even if your pay and benefits aren’t really all that competitive!” – Jeremy Watkin, Director of Customer Experience and Support at NumberBarn.

For tips and advice on how to foster strong relationships across multiple contact centre sites, read our article: How to Foster Strong Relationships Across Multiple Sites

Find Out What Your Competitor Is Really Offering and Try to Match It

Of course, most contact centres have to deal with the competition in other ways, and this can be particularly challenging if you notice a wave of agents leaving for the same contact centre down the road. 

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t waste time making assumptions, find out why people are really leaving, and adapt as quickly as possible to stem the flow.

“At one company I worked for, a lot of our agents started moving to the contact centre down the road, and we didn’t know why.

In the end, we had to get the recruitment team in there to find out what was happening and what was on offer.

In the end, we found out that flexible working was the big draw, so we adapted our working hours to offer more flexibility and stem the flow.” – Gareth Brophy, Vice President of Customer Experience and Back Office Capabilities at The DDC Group.

Accept That Sometimes You Just Have to Cut Your Losses

As these suggestions show, there are lots of ways to proactively and reactively protect your agents from being poached.

That being said, of course, sometimes you just have to accept you’ve reached your limits when salary differences are extreme, or the career opportunity is right for them, and wish them well.

Have Your Agents Ever Been Poached? What Have You Done About It?

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With thanks to the following people for sharing their thoughts and experiences for this article:

• Dara Kiernan, Leadership Development and Contact Centre Consultant
• Gareth Brophy, Vice President of Customer Experience and Back Office Capabilities at The DDC Group
• Jeremy Watkin, Director of Customer Experience and Support at NumberBarn
• Jessica Ham, an experienced contact centre leader and receiver of the UKCCF Gold Award for Head of Contact Centre
• Katie Stabler, CULTIVATE Customer Experience by Design and author of CX-Ism: Re-Defining Business Success
• Pier Ragone, Principal Consultant, CX Operations & Strategy

For more information on improving your agents’ working environment, read these articles next:

• Are You Doing Enough to Empower Your Agents?
• Why Your Agents Are Calling It Quits
• 10 Strategies to Help Agents Feel Less Lonely

Author: Megan Jones
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson